But,
apart from that, it is obvious that Johnson's broodings took the
form of lamenting his own sinfulness and moral worthlessness: what
the faults which troubled him were, it is hard to say. He does not
seem to have been repentant about the mortification he caused
others by his witty bludgeoning--indeed he considered himself a
polite man! But I believe, from many slight indications, that
Johnson was distressed by the consciousness of sensual impulses,
though he held them in severe restraint. His habit of ejaculatory
prayer was, I think, directed against this tendency. The agitation
with which he once said that corruption had entered into his heart
by means of a dream seems to me a proof of this. He took a tolerant
view of the lapses of others, and of course the standard of the age
was lax in this respect. But I have little doubt myself that here
Johnson found himself often confronted with a sensuous tendency
which he thought degrading, and which he constantly combated.
Apart from this, he was not afraid of illness in itself, except as
a prelude of mortality.
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